


White Light

by laila555



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brief mention of K/S, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Maybe not entirely platonic Spock/McCoy but not really slash, Mentions of suicide (not of main characters)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 09:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5200163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laila555/pseuds/laila555
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during a repair and recoup leave after the events of Narada: Bones has an agonizing day at work and finds comfort in an unexpected source when Spock comes over to crash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Light

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who's ever accidentally cried in a yoga class. :)

Three sharp raps reverberated through the apartment and Leonard bolted upright, heart pounding.

He blinked as physical awareness gradually trickled over him: the murmur of voices from the viewscreen; a sting of adrenaline from being startled awake; a deep stiffness from falling asleep sitting up. A beer bottle was sweating lightly in his right hand--god knows how he'd managed to keep a grip on that--and he brought it up to his mouth absently, grimacing at the flat taste. 

Leonard peered at the numbers on the wall. It was just after midnight, which meant he’d dropped into an uneasy doze over an hour ago. Vaguely, he recalled his intention on arriving home that evening to get drunk – really, richly drunk, drunk enough to forget…to forget…

Three raps broke again into the quiet of the room, and again Leonard started, his pulse spiking. “Alright alright, coming!” he yelled, hauling himself to his feet and setting down the bottle with a thunk. On an irrational impulse, he flicked the light panel on the wall as he passed it, flooding the room behind him with light as he stepped into the dark hallway.

The temporary quarters he’d been calling home for the past few weeks were spacious for one occupant, at least as far as Starfleet dorms went. It had probably been an RA suite, back when there were enough cadets to justify RAs. Leonard continued slapping on lights as he walked through the handful of industry-standard interiors, leaving a wake of bright but cheerless glare.

It couldn’t be another medical emergency, he thought. His personal comm was off but someone would have reached him on his med unit for that, or busted in the damn door. No, his suite was unlisted and there was really only one person who knew he was here, who might think nothing of stopping by in the middle of the night.

Leonard frowned. Jim, he knew, was throwing a party: some predictable Kirk scheme to gather what remained of Starfleet after the Narada incident and let loose their collective sorrows in morale-boosting debauchery. Leonard had sent him a short "busy, can't make it" message after leaving his shift, and had ignored Jim's calls and messages in reply, finally shutting off the comm altogether as they piled up. Jim was too empathetic not to know something was wrong, and after all these years he could read Leonard's moods like a book. Most likely he’d decided to come rouse his grumpy doctor friend from brooding solitude for his own good whether he liked it or not.

But the thought of his idealistic young friend at the front door uncharacteristically made Leonard’s heart sink. He’d seen the ugly truth of what kind of shape the cadets of Starfleet were in today, and he wasn’t sure he could face Jim’s frankly incomprehensible optimism in the face of it all. More than anything, he didn't want to share this mood with Jim--felt an awkwardly paternal impulse to shield him from the hopeless bitterness that had been sitting like a dead weight in his gut all evening.

He was at the front door. Taking a deep breath, he wrenched it open. “Look, kid, I told you – ” He began, and then stopped short.

The man standing in the hallway regarded him placidly, his face and body a collection of planes and angles that settled, as Leonard’s eyes adjusted to the dim hallway, into a familiar tall and slim figure dressed in black, a bag slung over one shoulder.

“Good evening, Doctor,” the man said.

“Spock,” Leonard managed, surprised. Spock said nothing else, and for a moment Leonard wondered if he could be still caught up in a half-doze, fitfully dreaming in the dark back room.

“May I enter?” Spock said finally, breaking the spell. Leonard shrugged and stepped aside.

Spock stepped into the kitchen and looked around curiously.

“It is very bright in here,” he observed.

“What’s going on?” Leonard asked bluntly. He sounded more irritated than he felt, he supposed. “Aren’t you supposed to be co-hosting Jim’s Friday night jambouree?”

Spock and Jim had requested, and been granted, couples' quarters for their sequester at Starfleet. Jim had confessed the whole state of affairs to Leonard while they were still shipside, and Leonard, alarmed at Jim's elation-bordering-on-mania, had managed to convince him to keep the whole thing under wraps while the dust settled. So he’d been taken aback at their openness here on Earth. Leonard supposed that being eye-witnesses to the destruction of a planet, coupled with multiple brushes with death apiece, was enough to make the risk of gossip seem trivial by comparison.

“I have just come from the festivities,” Spock said evasively. He suddenly seemed to find it difficult to meet Leonard's eyes.

“What’s this about then? There isn’t – there’s not something wrong over at your place, is there? Medically?” Leonard felt his pulse quicken.

Spock seemed to sense his anxiety and replied in a somewhat soothing voice. “No. All is proceeding, I believe, according to plan. Jim and our guests alike are in good spirits and health.”

“Then what? You two have a lover’s spat or something? Wait –“ Leonard interrupted himself as Spock stiffened. “Don’t answer that. I don’t wanna know.”

“While you are correct in assuming that the state and particulars of my relationship with the Captain is a private matter,” Spock said, “I can reassure you that I am not here under the influence of any interpersonal distress.” Leonard waited for Spock to continue.

“But…?” He prompted eventually, rolling his eyes.

“But, Jim has –“ Spock hesitated. “He has rather a larger acquaintance than I had realized. And a rather – noisier acquaintance.”

At that Leonard couldn’t help but grin, for the first time since leaving the hospital that evening. He had spent three years rooming with Jim in their academy days. Two friends over for a poker game would escalate quickly into two dozen or more crammed into every nook and cranny of their off-campus apartment, laughing, talking, listening to music. Jim thrived in the role of host, and was always so happy to give people a good time and to relieve stress, and so quick insist that everyone was welcome, that Leonard never had the heart to complain even when what began as casual impromptu events waxed long into the night and morning.

He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms, regarding Spock with amusement. “So you’ve got the entire population of Starfleet Dorm B in your room tying one on right now, huh?”

“I believe we may have acquired members of dorms C and D by this point as well,” Spock said drily, and Leonard chuckled.

“Alright. Can’t say I’m surprised. So what’s this got to do with me, Spock?” Leonard generally found Spock impossible to read, but thought that he seemed a little unsure of himself.

“Jim suggested that I – if it wouldn’t be an imposition – that is, I thought to ask – “

“You want to stay here for the night?” Leonard supplied. Spock nodded.

“Correct. Only, of course, if this is acceptable. I do not wish to inconvenience you.” 

Leonard shrugged. Living with Jim and then spending a few weeks on a starship had eradicated all his expectations of privacy. “Fine with me,” he said. “But I don’t have an extra bed. I guess Jim thought I did, because of Joanna… ” the sorrow he’d been fighting back since his disastrous shift swelled suddenly at the though of Jo, sweeping away his amusement at Spock’s late night asylum request.

“Anyway, I don’t have anything,” he muttered lamely. 

“That is of no consequence, Doctor,” Spock said, using his 'soothing' voice again. Leonard felt a vague disgruntlement at the prospect of being coddled. “I do not require a bed, or sleep. I merely require somewhere quiet to meditate and focus my thoughts.”

“Well…ok,” Leonard said. “You can use the back room for that, I guess. There’s nothing in there now but some boxes of stuff, but it’s quiet enough.” He pushed off from the wall and Spock followed him through the apartment.

The room was the smallest in the apartment, but it had a large window covering most of the South wall, and clean hardwood floors. There was a pile of blankets and pillows stacked in a corner, an institutional-issued desk, and a file cabinet stuffed with data from the Enterprise crew. Leonard walked to the window and drew the curtain: the view opened onto an empty side street, and let in ambient light from a few streetlamps.

“This do?” He asked, turning to Spock.

“Thank you. This will be more than sufficient,” Spock said. He slid the bag off his shoulder onto the ground beside his feet.

“Do you need a yoga mat or something?” Leonard asked. Spock raised an eyebrow.

“Do you posses a yoga mat, Doctor?” 

“No,” he admitted. “And stop calling me ‘Doctor,’ for gods sake, we’re not on the ship!”

“Very well, Leonard. In answer to your query, I require nothing other than darkness and quiet.”

“Well, I guess you’ll find that here just fine,” Leonard said. Spock inclined his head. Standing silently with him in the small empty room, Leonard felt a twinge of uneasiness at the odd sensation that he and Spock were the only two beings left on the planet.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said, turning away.

“Leonard?” Spock’s voice stopped him just as he reached the threshold and Leonard turned back.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you not participating in tonight’s celebration?”

There was simple curiosity in Spock’s voice, nothing more, but when Leonard opened his mouth to answer he found himself suddenly struck dumb. The image flashed in his mind of the girl on his table that day, her body lifeless as he fought with his team to revive her. Details he hadn’t even known he’d noticed swam into focus now: her damp blond hair, the bitten nails above her battered wrists, the tiny silver piercing in her upper lip flashing as he tilted her chin to move an intubation tube into place.

Spock was watching him patiently and it struck Leonard suddenly how young he looked. He’d sometimes had a feeling on the Enterprise, as they limped back to base, that he and Spock were the only adults among a crew of kids. Probably something to do with the grave way Spock held himself, or the methodical and unemotional way he’d dealt with Starfleet command in the gruesome aftermath of it all, or simply because he’d been the only non-cadet on the bridge for most of the ordeal. But he wasn’t more than two or three years older than Jim, probably. Practically a kid himself. The thought made Leonard feel even more depressingly alone.

“Wasn’t in the mood,” he said finally. Spock nodded. “Well…goodnight, Spock.”

“Goodnight, Leonard,” he heard him say as he left the room.

Leonard wandered back into the sitting room. The viewscreen was playing another newsreel of footage from Pike’s retirement ceremony. God knows why Leonard had left it on the Starfleet close-circuit station. He flicked the machine off. An uneaten sandwich sat perched on the armchair, and his stomach turned. He hadn’t eaten since morning, but the thought of food was somewhat sickening. His half-full beer bottle sat where he'd left it, and he picked it up and walked back out to the kitchen, poured it down the sink, opened the fresher and popped open a new bottle. Took a sip, leaning over the sink. Waited.

Suddenly he realized he was listening for Spock. No sound at all came from the back bedroom, and Leonard scowled, walked back to the living room. Flipped the viewscreen back on and sat down.

Why the hell hadn’t there been someone with that girl, anyway? One of the only surviving members of her year and division, lost a serious girlfriend in the melee, along with god knows how many friends. Her records had shown no next of kin. Some kind of orphan, here on a scholarship. Three years from now she could’ve been another Jim Kirk. Ten years earlier she could’ve been Joanna.

Leonard got up again, abruptly. He flipped the channels on the viewscreen, found the late-night news, which was droning a report on the restructuring of the Federation now that a founding planet had been lost forever. Now that an entire goddamn planet had been sucked out of the sky out of some psychotic ugly spite.

He switched it off once more. He had done everything he could, hands steady and heart racing, tried to leach the poison from her stomach and staunch the blood from her wrists and force air back into her lungs. That girl should have had someone watching over her. Mandatory counseling for all cadets wasn’t _enough,_ goddammit, these children needed _protection,_ needed to be held together, needed some way to comprehend how it was possible that with one misstep their own planet could have gone the way of Vulcan and winked out of the universe. This girl whose only friends in this world were now spiraling slowly somewhere in the frozen void of space, limbs and gear and machinery together like a flotsam in the ocean…

Leonard paced back to the kitchen. He poured the rest of his fresh beer down the sink and turned the tap on to rinse the gurgling pale liquid away. Got out a glass and filled it with water and drank it down. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

How many other cadets were sitting awake right now with their mouths open and their eyes wet, assaulted by the images replaying over the news and the sudden emptiness of their lives? Who else wasn’t at Jim’s party, basking in the relief of the planet saved and life going on? For who else was that relief brutally overpowered by the guilt of survival, the terrifyingly sure knowledge that there was catastrophic evil in the world?

Leaving the kitchen, Leonard moved towards the room where he’d left Spock, walking as quietly as he could. There was no door on the doorway, and when he arrived he leaned against the jamb and peered in, switching off the hallway light behind him.

Spock sat on the bare floor, dimly lit by the soft light trailing in from the window. His torso was one long straight column from the top of his head to his tapering waist, his legs folded underneath him like a pedestal.

Leonard knew his approach couldn’t have been completely silent to someone as attentive as Spock, but Spock didn’t move a muscle as Leonard stared from the doorway. In fact, he was practically statuesque. Leonard frowned as he stared harder, trying to break the illusion of motionlessness, and at last detected subtle movement in the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest.

Spock’s breath was coming agonizingly slowly. Bones thought of the girl on his table again, remembered willing her grimly to just _breathe_ goddammit, fucking take a _breath_ – but no, Spock was alive, he reminded himself sternly. He could see, even in the relative darkness, the smooth, relaxed set of Spock’s face, the deliberate poise in his long fingers spread over his knees. He tried to recall if Vulcans had a significantly slower respiratory rate than humans, if meditation was supposed to slow it down this much.

Leonard gradually became aware that he was unconsciously imitating Spock’s breathing pattern. Straightening, he tried to adjust his breath exactly to Spock’s, letting the air out of his lungs in trickling increments, waiting until he saw the expanding motion in Spock’s body before taking in air again.

In less than a minute his lungs were burning Forgetting himself, Leonard let out a breath in an exasperated rush of air that echoed loudly into the stillness.

Spock’s head swiveled towards him, and his eyes opened. 

“Is something the matter, Leonard?” His voice was neutral, unperturbed, as if Leonard had walked in on him doing something totally normal and not interrupted him in the midst of some kind of weird Vulcan voodoo.

“No,” he said. Spock continued to look at him.

“Would you like to join me?” he asked. Leonard swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Sure,” he heard himself say, to his own surprise.

Spock extended a hand, and for a panicked moment Leonard thought he expected him to take it in his own – but Spock’s arm continued to move in a sweeping gesture, to indicate the space on the floor opposite him. Gingerly, Leonard stepped into the room. He stood in front of Spock, feeling acutely self-conscious.

“What should I – should I sit down?” He asked gruffly.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” Spock replied. Leonard looked around him, then walked to the corner and pulled a blanket from the pile of bedding, spread it on the floor. He added a pillow for good measure. Damned if he was going to spend the night bruising his stiff legs on the hard wood. Damned if he knew what he was doing here, anyway.

He sat down, settling himself on the blanket, facing Spock from a few feet away. 

“Am I supposed to close my eyes or something?” He said, fighting the impulse to whisper.

“You may close them or rest them gently in front of you, as you wish.” Spock’s own eyes lowered and Leonard studied the planes of his face. Spock’s skin seemed paper white, almost translucent, his eyelashes long enough to brush his cheeks. His hair, which had grown out somewhat since they’d returned to Earth, fell in a pitch-black sweep across his forehead, the points of his ears emerging from the hard line of his cheeks. Leonard was struck forcefully, as he rarely was, with the reality that Spock was of a different species. He’d never seemed so enigmatically _other._

Leonard closed his eyes. He listened for Spock’s breathing and heard nothing, just a tiny rumbling sound from the window as a car went by somewhere in the distance.

“Now what?” He said.

“Focus on your breath,” Spock murmured. “Trace its path through your body as you inhale, and then expel this air with the intention to release any turbulence.” Leonard’s eyes were closed: he rolled them anyway. Focus on his breathing. Right. The sound of air through his nostrils seemed overloud, artificial somehow. Behind his eyelids his mind called up the recent vision of Spock’s face, weird and impassive – and then it melted into Jim’s, exhausted and stricken and bruised as it was before they’d arrived home – and then the stark white and silver of the ER rose up to swallow them both.

Leonard shifted on his blankets.

“Leonard.” Spock’s voice interrupted the flow of images. “Your thoughts are very disordered.”

“You ain’t reading my mind are you?” Leonard said, squinting one eye open.

“That would not be necessary even if it were possible. The chaos of your mind is quite apparent.” Now Spock sounded a bit more, well, human. Leonard felt himself relax slightly.

“I don’t know, Spock…I don’t really go in for all this hippie voodoo chakra stuff,” he said, opening his eyes all the way to find Spock looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Do you know about the chakras, Leonard?” Somehow when he said ‘Leonard’ it still sounded like ‘Doctor.’

“Uh, no,” he said. They were both speaking in lowered voices, and Leonard thought absurdly of the spectacle they made, sitting cross-legged together like girls at a slumber party. Jim would laugh and laugh.

“The term derives from the Sanskrit word for wheel, also encompassing the notion of an eternal and fixed circle through which energy flows. The chakras are mystic locations in the body and the spirit-body through which _prana,_ or life force, flows, and in which it is concentrated.”

“Oh,” Leonard said, feeling a little guilty. “Ok, then. No disrespect to any of that.”

“Would you like me to describe them to you?”

“Describe…the what?”

“The seven major chakras which delineate the energies of the subtle body.”

Leonard could think of little that interested him less than a description of the seven major chakras which delineate the energies of the subtle body – but on the other hand, here he was sitting alone with Spock in a dark room in the middle of the night. He supposed there was no harm in agreeing to anything under this set of circumstances.

“Knock yourself out,” he said, closing his eyes again. In the silence that followed he chuckled to himself to imagine Spock sorting through that particular idiom, and then Spock’s steady voice, startlingly deepened, filled the room.

“ _Mulhadara,_ or root chakra,” he intoned. “In this chakra we find our stability and grounding, our reason for being, our right to exist. It is located at the coccyx, the base of the spine. Symbolized by a lotus flower and a deep, red light. Breathe in deeply and feel this red light travel through your body from the place where you are most deeply rooted to your sense of being and belonging. Breathe out and release this light through the crown of your head.” 

Leonard took a deep breath and tried to imagine a red light moving through his body, feeling slightly ridiculous. Red light meant the warning systems lining the hallways of the Enterprise, the flashing of the emergency vehicles racing to throw at his feet a lifeless body too far gone for him to reach. He concentrated harder, trying to see the warm red light Spock was describing, trying to release something poisonous out of himself.

“ _Svadhishthaan chakra,_ ” Spock continued. “In this chakra is contained our emotional needs, pains, and pleasures, our joy and sorrow. Here is the source of intimacy, including sexual intimacy, and reproduction. It is located in the lower stomach beneath the navel and in the sexual organs, and is represented by a crescent moon surrounded by a lotus flower and by an orange light. Breathe in and let this orange light rise up from where your emotions are seated in your belly. Breathe out and release it through the crown of your head.” 

Pain and pleasure. Sex and death. Leonard thought of the misery of lost love that was itself enough to die from, that that girl had felt on top of all the unspeakable rest of it. What the hell good did it do her, or himself, or anyone, sitting here contemplating the lotus flower like some goddamn phony guru? He fought to think of the orange light, to imbue it with something benign, to watch it float up through his body and out the top of his head.

Spock was speaking on, smoothly.

“ _Manipura chakra,_ governing the process of digestion, converting matter into energy in our bodies. The transition point between the lower chakras and the heart chakra, between fundamental and complex emotion.”

As Spock recited, Leonard was mortified to feel tears start behind his eyes, and with it a flood of embarrassment and anger. The girl was on his table and her heart was stopped. He could feel her clammy skin under his fingers, how it had felt as he slammed a hypo to her neck, raced to find a pulse. He was a man of action, and what the fuck was he doing sitting here and listening to Spock chant on about some ethereal bullshit no one could touch?

“Manipura chakra is the focal point for our power over ourselves, our confidence, our spiritual expansiveness,” Spock was saying. “Located at the navel, it is represented by a downward-pointing triangle with ten petals and by a bright yellow light. Breathe in…” 

Leonard’s ears were roaring. He tried to focus on Spock’s voice, his instructions, breathing the goddamn yellow light up through his head – but his breath was coming faster, his heart beginning to pound. The girl was on his table and her heart was stopped, her heart was a lump of cooling meat in her chest, wasted, wasted, wasted.

“ _Anahata chakra,_ or heart chakra,” Spock said. “A powerful chakra representing the heart and the mind in the heart, holding our complex emotions, our passion, our compassion for self and others, our unconditional love.”

An unbearable sweep of emotion rushed through him, and Leonard wrenched open his eyes with a gasp to find Spock watching him from what suddenly seemed a terrible distance. His vision swimming, Leonard saw how wrong he'd been: Spock was not young at all but ancient, timeless, ageless, poised in his immobility as if waiting for something inevitable.

The words burst out of Leonard in a snarl.

“Goddammit, I’m sorry!” he yelled, staring into Spock’s fathomless eyes. “I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Leonard knew that he was babbling, that Spock couldn’t know what he was talking about. And yet, Spock’s face seemed suddenly alive with emotion, as if a mask had dropped, or as if Leonard were seeing him with amplified vision. Spock’s eyes were two dark pools of pure empathy, and he kept them trained on Leonard as, shockingly, he reached out one hand and pressed it firmly against Leonard’s bent leg.

Leonard could feel strength in the pressure of Spock’s palm, streaming through his arm from his shoulder, his back, from the long straight line of his entire body. Strength, and something else: a radiating calmness that flowed into him at the point where their bodies touched, a blossoming warmth spreading through his chest. With clinical deftness Leonard catalogued the reactions of his own body: his pulse rate dropping, his breath slowing and evening. The knot in his stomach loosening. The images in his mind greying, falling away harmlessly.

“I grieve with thee,” Spock said simply. Leonard could feel unshed tears clinging to the curve of his eyes as he hung suspended in that somber, contemplative gaze.

After a moment he felt Spock’s hand begin to withdraw and, automatically, his own hand shot out to clamp around Spock’s wrist, holding him still. In the back of his mind somewhere he was both appalled at his own behavior and dimly astonished that his embarrassment had completely evaporated.

Spock made no attempt to remove his wrist from Leonard’s grip. “Shall I continue describing the chakras?” He said quietly after several moments. Leonard nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

With a graceful motion, Spock shifted close to Leonard, their bent knees barely touching. Leonard let Spock gently pry his fingers from where they gripped Spock's wrist, then let Spock turn his hand over and place it, palm up, on his own knee. Spock then fitted the back of his hand against Leonard’s palm, stacking their hands together like shells. He looked up at Leonard and, wordlessly, Leonard laid his other hand against his other knee, palm up, and felt Spock’s hand slip into it.

“Close your eyes,” Spock said, and Leonard did, spilling tears onto his cheeks. Heat seemed to flow into his palms from the back of Spock’s hands, creating a line of electricity up his arms, through his heart, criss-crossing his body.

“The Anahata chakra is where you hold your deep compassion for all those whom you have healed, and for all those whose lives you have fought to save,” Spock said. His hands pressed into Leonard’s lightly. “Your heart chakra is very strong, Leonard. Strong and pure.”

Leonard took a deep breath. Spock was going on, telling him about the flower of the heartmind and the green light and instructing him to breathe it through, release it out. He felt a sense of peace enveloping him along with a deep, overpowering exhaustion, as if he were somehow floating in space somewhere, where only the sound of Spock’s voice and the living flesh of his hands were solid, were real.

A pale blue light. A deep violet light. A bright white light. Spock’s voice went on and gradually Leonard lost the sense of the syllables, or perhaps Spock had switched to Vulcan, or perhaps he was no longer speaking and Leonard was merely hearing the echo of Spock’s thoughts somehow, through their joined hands. An image of the girl on the table floated before his eyes once more but this time it was bathed in colored light, and with his last threads of consciousness he saw her open her eyes and smile, adding to the radiance around her.

With steady pressure at his hands steadying his body, a steady voice threading through his mind stilling his thoughts, Leonard drifted free.

 

***********************

Leonard woke with a start. For a moment he stared in consternation at the sunlight streaming through the window, which was strangely looming above him. He was --- lying on the floor?

He sat up, wincing at the crick in his neck. He was lying fully clothed on a pile of blankets and pillows, with a blanket draped over his legs. He didn’t remember covering himself. Spock must have –

Spock. 

Leonard felt his face heat as the events of the previous night flooded back. He would have absolutely chalked it up to a bizarre stress-dream, except that here he was, lying on the floor in the empty second bedroom.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and tried to recall with clarity what exactly had transpired. Spock coming over to escape the party in his quarters. Spock inviting him to meditate. Spock reciting the chakras, Spock…holding his hands, for god’s sake? Leonard groaned.

And yet…as his initial sense of mortification and bafflement receded somewhat, Leonard couldn’t ignore the feeling of lightness that pervaded his mind, as though some burden had been lifted from him. He thought again briefly of the events of yesterday, of the girl who’d killed herself and whom he’d been unable to save – thought of it with sorrow, with regret, but no longer with the same helpless anguish. A strange unfamiliar sensation seemed to be vibrating in him very softly, a feeling of warmth, or acceptance, or just of not being alone.

Leonard shook his head, feeling embarrassment rise again. “Goddamn Vulcan mumbo-jumbo,” he muttered to himself as he staggered to his feet a little stiffly.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen, Leonard offered a fervent prayer that Spock had quietly seen himself out – but no such luck. He sat at the table, back ramrod straight, reading from a PADD with a cup of something steaming by his hand.

He looked up when Leonard entered.

“Good morning, Leonard,” he said, his voice clipped and precise, and the whole picture was so quotidian, so – so _Spock-like,_ so far from the ethereal spirit who’d sat across from him last night, that the whole thing seemed even more like some kind of bizarre sleepwalking fantasy.

“Yeah, hi, Spock,” he said, somewhat stupefied. Spock dropped his eyes back to the PADD.

“So...what the hell was that, last night?” He blurted out. Spock turned to him and set the PADD down.

“Clarify.”

“Did you do some kind of Vulcan mind trick on me?” Leonard demanded. “Is that why – is that why I, you know, got – got emotional? Passed out on the floor like that?” Spock’s eyebrow rose.

“Negative, Leonard. You merely felt the powerful effects of deep meditation. Your body and mind were releasing a very large about of tension.”

“Yeah, well.” Leonard felt an absurd welling up of gratitude mixed with equally sharp discomposure. Spock was still watching him, impassively. “Well, you gonna hang around here all day or what?”

Spock seemed to flinch ever so slightly, and Leonard immediately regretted his words. It occurred to him that Spock had probably been waiting for him to wake up so as not to be rude by leaving without saying goodbye.

But it was too late to course-correct: Spock was already rising, slipping his PADD into a pocket of his bag. He carried his cup to the sink and dumped the contents, rinsing it while speaking over his shoulder to Leonard.

“No, Doctor.” Leonard winced slightly at the title. “I am confident that the activities that led me to impose on you have ceased, and will no longer be ‘hanging around,’ as you say.”

“I told you to call me Leonard. You don’t need to wash that, for god’s sake, just leave it.” He reached out a hand and, before he could stop himself, took Spock’s arm just above the elbow. “Spock.” Spock turned. “You can stay here and work if you want. I could use the company, to be honest.” Spock regarded him for a moment, then moved away, slipping his arm free.

“Thank you – Leonard,” he said. “But I must return to my quarters. I will see you at the strategic mission planning session tomorrow along with the captain and Lieutenants Sulu and Uhura.”

“Right. Ok. When you get back, tell Jim – tell Jim –“ Leonard faltered as he suddenly recalled with vivid clarity Spock’s hands lying on top of his, the intensity of his gaze, Leonard’s own strange lack of self-consciousness. 

Spock was watching him.

“What would you like me to convey to Jim?” He prompted.

“Just…remind him that he needs to reschedule his post-mission physical with me,” Leonard grumbled. “He can’t put it off forever.”

“Very well.” Spock nodded. “Thank you, Leonard, for your hospitality.”

“Sure.”

Spock turned, collected his bag, and pulled the door open while Leonard fidgeted. 

“Wait!” Leonard called when Spock was already in the hallway, pulling the door shut. He leaned back into the apartment obediently.

“Thanks for the –“ Leonard made a vague gesture. “I mean…thanks.” He felt an echo of something powerful, some trace of intimacy, as their eyes met.

“Thanks are unnecessary,” said Spock, breaking the spell. “I will see you tomorrow at 13:00 hours.”

“Yeah, ok,” Leonard said as the door closed. He stood staring at it for a moment.

“Damn Vulcans,” he said under his breath, and went to straighten up the spare bedroom.


End file.
